Economy · Escape from Subsistence

GDP per Capita

Eighteen hundred years stuck near $1,100 per person, then a breakout: 14× since 1820.

• $1,100 in year 1, still only $1,500 by 1820
• +36% in 1,800 yrs → 14× since 1820
• The Malthusian trap, broken
• Constant 2021 international $

For most of recorded history, growth didn’t make people richer; it just made more people. Average output per person sat near $1,100 (constant 2021 international dollars) from the Roman era to the Middle Ages, and had crawled to only $1,500 by 1820: a 36% gain in eighteen centuries. This was the Malthusian trap: any surplus was absorbed by population. The Industrial Revolution broke it. Since 1820 average world income has risen fourteen-fold to over $21,000 per person, the single largest change in ordinary human living standards ever measured. The flat handle of this hockey stick is the point: nearly everything we call modern prosperity happened in just the last two centuries.

Source: Maddison Project / Our World in Data

Download the data: gdp_per_capita.csv · gdp_per_capita.json

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